And often, when we speak of issues of the gods and faith, these issues also tend to hover in the realms of theism. As a result, David Brooks’s column “Alone, Yet Not Alone” makes for some very interesting reading on that subject as he deals with the many of the complaints hurled against religion these days while looking at how a young Catholic songwriter experiences faith.

Perhaps Brooks is going through some sort of awakening himself these days, as he has also written another very existential column “The Art of Presence,” which could really be an excerpt from an existential psychology textbook as to how to be present with another in a time of need. For his many readers who have probably never heard many of these ideas before, it’s a brilliant way to bring some of these thoughts into the mainstream.

Perhaps one of the most moving pieces you may read and experience comes from Simon Critchley in “The Dangers of Certainty: A Lesson From Auschwitz,” a story of the author’s remembrance of a BBC television series he watched as a 13-year-old boy and the impact it still has on him today as he struggles to understand the interplay between knowledge, uncertainty, and the human beings who interpret it.

If you haven’t been following any of the groundbreaking work my former New York Times colleague Amanda Hess has been doing to expose what is really going in gender relations today, particularly in the media, at least check out her story in Slate commenting on a recent New York Times Magazine story posing the question about whether a more equal marriage means less sex. Hess’s article “Does Gender Equality Kill Sex Lives?” takes a hard look at what kinds of jobs are really being equated.